New Space in the Electronic Age

An essay by Peter Weibel on German endo-physicist Otto E. Rössler.

THE WORLD AS A MERE INTERSECTION: THE RÖSSLER-BOSCOVICH-COVARIANT THEOREM

Classical physics is like classical space, a world of the
external observer who, if necessary, is constructed
theoretically. Ernst Mach's depiction (around 1900) is
originally just such a model of that somewhat naive abstraction
of the external observer whose absoluteness goes so far that
the logical and real consequence, namely of showing a drawing
repeating the observed situation, is simply negated. This is
meant to avoid the truth that we ourselves are a constructive
part of that world we are observing. Gödel's
theorem of incompleteness is the first example of considering
the consequences of what happens when we are part of what we
are describing or observing. The laws of the physics which
proceed from this principle of an observer-relativity, i.e.,
the endophysics established by O.E. Rössler, are different
from those of classical exophysics. Modern electronic space is
close to endophysics, as in the electronic world the observer
is almost inevitably a construction element of this world,
i.e., an inner observer, for whom parts of the world are
distorted in a non-correctable or non-recognizable way. What
began with perspective, the relativization of the world by the
location of the observer, has become generalized in the
electronic age: by and large, the world loses its binding
character of objectivity and becomes simply
observer-objective (O.E. Rössler). The
electronic world tends to become a mere interface between inner
observer and objects. As an intersection between observer and
objects, the technical world increasingly becomes the subject
of artificial manipulations. As R.J. Boscovich recognized as
early as the 18th century, the world is becoming a rubber
world, a matter we do not notice because we ourselves are made
of rubber. In the electronic age, the observer-relativity of
the perspective has been generalized into the sole
observer-objectivity of the entire electronic space and of all
worlds. The computer-produced virtual worlds are, so far, the
best models of this new endo-physics of space, i.e., of the
mere observer-objective electronic world.

The question of what a machine or system looks like if the
observer operates within this machine or as part of this system
is the endo-access to the world. Observation of the world is
only possible from inside, which means that observer-relativity
must be recognized instead of inertial systemrelativity, with
the incomplete depiction of its distorted and bent
simultaneity-hyperareas. Electronics suggests this
endo-approach to the world. Real electronic art is therefore
not based on the space of classical physics or on natural
space, but on the space of endo-physics, i.e. on that of
blind-sight experiments, of simulation, of virtuality. After
all, all art reacts to this state of the modern technical
world. Sculpture anchored in the space of 19th-Century
classical physics is based on continuity, on the human body, on
complete visibility. Contemporary spatial art, on the other
hand, is based on non-local phenomena, on the machine and on
the dislocated object, on language, on the immaterial
constituent of the wave form, on number, on the distorted and
bent space layers themselves, on observer-relativity and
observer-objectivity. Electronics has built the endo-gate to
the world. Now we need a form of art to create the endo-gate to
the electronic world.

The new space of the electronic world no longer
differentiates between outer and inner spaces, but in this new
space they are perforated, discreetly penetrated. The space of
the inner observer, the endo-space, has a second exo-objective
side. The space of the outside observer has a second ignored
side. As a product of the observer-relativity of the world,
these two levels of reality can turn outside spaces into inside
spaces at any time, and vice versa. The question of absolute
space and the object as such gives way to the problem of
intersection. The observer-dependence of the object area of
experience, in which, in an extreme case, we ourselves are the
subject of observation and experience, makes of the world a
realm of Duchampian doors, on whose endo-gates it reads:
"Entrance from the world" and on
whose exo-doors: "Exit into the
world". In the new space of endo-physics and
the electronic world, there are only double gates to outside
and inside spaces. The world as a mere intersection of
observation, as a possible double access to exo- and
endo-spaces, this is the
Rössler-Boscovich-covariant-theorem. The media world is
one such covariant, it is the world of the inner observer.
Internal and external observers create intersections which bend
under the eyes of the observer. The transformation of the
Machian model of how man sees the world is an example of this.
The media are therefore not only masks, mappings, models
depicting or simulating reality, but also measuring chains,
constructing reality.

TECHNOLOGY & THE LANGUAGE OF
ABSENCE

Language and technology have developed from a common root,
namely the experience of insufficiency. As the
"language of absence" (S.
Freud), technology continues the work of
writing. In the technical language of images, in the polytropy
of electronic culture, extending from the artificial brain to
artificial images, the culmination of the complexity of a
language takes place, a language commensurate with the
complexity of technological society. The invention of writing,
approximately 5000 years ago, was the first communications
revolution, as it meant, for the first time, an abandonment of
direct local communication between persons living isochronally
and isotopically, i.e., in the same time and the same space,
previously the only possibility of communication. The localized
universe of communication had already been penetrated at an
indexical level, for example by smoke signals or bush
telegraph. However, with an almost universal perforation of
space effected by electromagnetic waves (1887), the media have
transformed a multitude of local universes into one universe of
non-locality, in which virtually anything can happen anywhere.
The ability to symbolize allowed, for the first time,
"dis-location" and
"dis-temporality", the
surmounting of space and time.

By means of writing, spatial and temporal absences could be
filled and distances could be bridged. Information on past
events, or events which had occurred elsewhere, could be stored
and passed on to people living in later times or different
places. By means of writing, incorporeal information could be
pushed around in time and space. This was the beginning of
polytropic and polychronal communication. The second
communications revolution was brought about by the invention of
letterpress printing, some 500 years ago. What writing had
achieved for individual communication now
became possible for mass communication, which
was actually opened up by this invention. The symbolization of
messages by electromagnetic fields, as introduced by the
telegraph developed by mathematician C. F. Gauss and physician
WE. Weber in 1844, and providing the basis for electronic
information processing by computer, is the third, the telematic
communications revolution. It individualizes mass communication
and intensifies polytropy and disembodiment. Signs travelling
at electronic speed create new spatio-temporal arrangements.
Here, time dislocates space and produces a placeless space. The
signs of the telematic communications revolution are more
immaterial and incorporeal than the earlier ones, due to the
separation of (material) messenger and (immaterial) message. As
a result, the bounds of space and time are alternately reduced
or expanded.

Tool technology is the key to human evolution. We need
technology to survive. The scarcer the space and the larger the
population, the more vital is the overlapping and simulation of
spaces, times and bodies, so that more objects and subjects can
be present at the same time. Technology must therefore develop
further towards teletechnology, the tools must become
teleoperators and telefactors, society must become a
tele-technotronic civilization. In the same way, the tools of
art must develop further if they are to belong to the survival
strategies. Even stone tools indicated the close integration of
technology and survival. In the complex, hierarchically-woven,
spatio-temporally overlapping society of today, the tools and
therefore the arts also have to be more complex. If there had
been any cultural policies at the time, man would have
subsidized dinosaurs and kept them alive artificially, as is
now the case with complete art institutions from stone
sculpture to the opera. Technical development is inevitably
accompanied by loss. A changed form of tool art, which
stimulates man's ability to abstract and symbolize, as
happens, for example, through the polytropy of polychronism and
polytopy in media art, is now the only human art. The
polytropic development of tools and binary language is, and
requires, man's aptitude for the abstraction and
symbolization necessary for survival.

PSYCHO-TECHNOLOGY

A technical victory over space and time basically also means
a victory over insufficiency, absence. The media have become a
second virtual body which never leaves man. As long as the
television is playing, as long as a telephone can speak as a
second mouth, as long as a photograph can still suggest
presence, so long can people ward off their fear as well as the
devastating consequences of an imaginary castration complex.
Technology helps to fill, to bridge, to overcome the
insufficiency emerging from absence.

Every form of technology is teletechnology and serves to
overcome spatial and temporal distance. However, this victory
over distance and time is only a phenomenological aspect of the
(tele-) media. The real effect of the media lies in overcoming
the mental disturbances (fears, control mechanisms, castration
complexes, etc.) caused by distance and time, by all forms of
absence, leave, separation, disappearance, interruption,
withdrawal or loss. By overcoming or shutting off the negative
horizon of absence, the technical media become technologies of
care and presence. By visualizing the absent, making it
symbolically present, the media also transform the damaging
consequences of absence into pleasant ones.

While overcoming distance and time, the media also help us
overcome the fear with which these inspire the psyche. The
media triumph by affirming the withdrawal from existence, as
they can heal the effects of this withdrawal and transform them
into a symbolic triumph. The media therefore achieve a piece of
advanced cultural work by raising and complicating the symbolic
presence. They mark the place of absence, overcome absence,
spatially, temporally and psychologically. Schizophrenia and
technology are like synchronized couplings. Are they,
therefore, also psychotic systems? The media
are the ways and means of Western logocentrism, the way and
duration of thinking. Those who picture life without the media
instead of seeing that the media show the way, become slaves to
symptoms of masking. However, a symptom is not only the effect
of a disturbance, but also a medium of truth. The media, even
as a mask, are therefore both medium of truth and endo-gate,
the dual access to the world.